Letters to the Editor: East Rockaway, Lynbrook

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Fund a sewage outfall pipe

To the Editor: The Herald’s editorial in the June 6-12 issue, concerning the Bay Park Sewage Plant (“Protect the bays — fund the Bay Park pipe”), was refreshing to read. The editorial rightfully agrees with many Bay Park and East Rockaway residents who have been fighting for years to make an ocean outfall pipe a reality. For a plant that discharges 70 million gallons of nitrogen-rich wastewater a day, the outfall pipe will do much to improve our environment, save fish and marine life and keep our children and families safe — especially my constituents in the Bay Park, East Rockaway, Oceanside and Island Park communities. Nassau County, Executive Ed Mangano and Legislator Howard Kopel were on the right track in making millions of dollars worth of long-needed upgrades and enhancements of operational and odor control systems when Sandy innundated the plant with more than nine feet of saltwater. They should be commended for their efforts, and I’m pleased their good works will continue. The long-needed ocean outfall pipe from the plant into the Atlantic will do much to improve our bays and waterways, as the Herald notes. Federal funds the county is due through FEMA Sandy reimbursements will be put to good use making this happen. The Cedar Creek Sewage Treatment Plant in Wantagh already has a 3.5-mile-long pipe to disperse effluent into deep water — the Bay Park plant would benefit if it had one too. The federal government and Gov. Andrew Cuomo should prioritize these funds to extend the Bay Park plant’s outflow pipe into the Atlantic. For too long, it was pie in the sky — now that we continue to recover from Sandy and its horrendous tidal flooding, those federal funds will help our neighbors and local fisherman by being put to use funding the outfall pipe.